


Stand Up Again

by darwinzfinchez



Category: Spartacus Series (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, Gallows Humor, Healing, Humour as a coping mechanism, Jokes about rape, M/M, Multi, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Stand Up Comedy, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-14 19:45:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11790153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darwinzfinchez/pseuds/darwinzfinchez
Summary: Agron is a stand up comedian working in London when one day he wakes up in hospital with no idea what happened to him. When he figures out what it was that brought him into hospital, he's traumatised, and it's up to his friends to support him as he tries to heal to the point where he can get back to his normal life again





	Stand Up Again

**Author's Note:**

> I've done that annoying thing where I've temporarily abandoned my multi chaptered fic to write a one-shot. 
> 
> Warning: Though this does not contain graphic descriptions of sexual violence it does contain scenes where a rape victim uses EXTREMELY dark humour to deal with what happened to them - this could be disturbing for some people, and if you don't want to read it for that reason, that's absolutely fine.
> 
> The stand up takes a while to appear, and Nasir takes even longer - mostly this is just Agron-centric

Agron heard a familiar voice. Australian? His ears always perked up when he heard another Australian accent. This one sounded a lot like his mum. But Mum was in Melbourne. He drifted off again.

            This time it definitely sounded like his mum. And she sounded upset – she sounded like she had been crying.

            Fuck, what did I do now, Agron thought, and then the sound faded away again.

            More voices – was that Dad? Was that Duro? And someone else, someone English, saying something in a reassuring tone. Though Agron always found English accents vaguely reassuring for some reason – he had chosen a very soothing country – for him – to settle in. What was beeping? It was annoying.

            “Agron? Agron, can you squeeze my hand? Agron?”  

            Agron felt a hand in his and squeezed. He was vaguely aware of the sound of a commotion before exhaustion overwhelmed him again.

            “Should we try and wake him up?”

            “You can certainly try. He’s a lot less sedated now.”

            “I’ve heard that people are more likely to wake up when they hear the voice of someone they know.”

            “Well, I’ve seen it go both ways. Some people wake up when their mum comes to see them, some people wake up for me and are always too tired to open their eyes when their mum comes to see them. One guy was very reduced conscious level, we weren’t sure he was going to come round, and then I turned around one day and he was staring at me. About gave me a heart attack.”

            “Agron? Agron, are you awake?”

            Agron went to open his eyes, but they seemed to be glued shut. He grunted in frustration, and the mattress shifted under him as someone perched next to him.

            “Agron?” It was definitely his mum, and she was definitely about to start crying. “Agron?”

            With an immense effort, he wrenched his eyes open, and immediately shut them again, dazzled.

            “Agron, Agron!”

            Agron was dimly aware of the weight on his chest of a his mum draping herself over him to give him a hug, and tried to lift up his arms to hug her back, but something tugged at his wrist, and someone made an upset noise and grabbed his hand.

            “Mind your a-line! You’ve got to be _careful_!”

            Mum, he thought, and then everything faded away.

            By the time the world faded back in, it was dark, and Agron was almost alone.

            “Hello,” a friendly, but unfamiliar voice said, “Are you awake?”

            Agron wanted to say no, but the best he could manage was “Mmph” and turning his head and going back to sleep.

            Lights flicking on. Conversation. The smell of toast. Normally it would make Agron hungry, but not this time.

            The rumble of conversation. His name, and a debate about its root.

            My parents were stoners, Agron thought. I’m lucky I didn’t come out green, my parents smoked so much pot, that’s where it comes from.

            “ _Good morning.”_ someone said, not sounding like they expected a reply. “ _Are you awake?_ ”

            Motivated more by spite than anything, Agron opened his eyes and focused quickly enough to stare intently at the doctor leaning over him, who leapt backwards with a very satisfying yelp. There was muffled tittering from the end of the bed, and Agron, feeling exhausted, closed his eyes again.

            “ _How are you feeling?_ ” the same doctor asked, having apparently managed to compose himself.

            I tried to go back to sleep after opening my eyes, Agron thought, what do you fucking think? He didn’t respond.     

            “ _Hello?_ ”

            Agron cracked open an eye and stared at the doctor for a moment before mumbling “M’tired.” and closing his eye again. His lips twitched at the sound of laughter from the other people at the end of the bed.

            “We’ll come back a bit later.” the doctor said, and the shuffling of feet told Agron the ward round was moving on. He shifted slightly in the bed, as much as he could with all the wires, and drifted off again.

            White ceiling tiles. The beeping of machines. Bustling. Muffled conversations. Feeling strangely peaceful, Agron blinked a couple of times and strained to focus on a vague shape to his left side, high up. It was transparent, but the way the light bent through it, it looked like water. But with writing on it. A bag of water with writing on it. And a trail went down from the bag to... Agron’s hand. He was on a drip. Oh, he was in a hospital. It had been on the tip of his tongue (the tip of his mind?) for ages.

            “You’re awake.”

            Agron was lying on his back, and had to tuck his chin into his neck to get a look at the nurse standing at the end of his bed.

            “’Parrently.” His lips stuck together when he tried to talk

            “D’you know where you are?”

            Agron glanced around again.

            “Hospital?”

            “Yes. Do you know which hospital?”

            “Nup.”

            “Do you know why you’re in hospital?”

            This was the first time it had occurred to Agron to wonder why he was in hospital, and the fact that he had absolutely no idea worried him, even through the haze of drugs.

            “Nup. Why?”

            The nurse frowned.

            “We’re still trying to put it all together ourselves. Let’s see what I can tell you.”

            She disappeared, and Agron relaxed, looking up at the ceiling again, thinking about absolutely nothing.

            “Hello?”

            Agron turned his head, to find someone else crouched next to his bed.

            “Do you remember me?”

            “Nup.”

            “Naevia. I’ve been looking after you, but you’ve been pretty groggy most of the time.”

            “K.”

            “Do you have any memory of what brought you into hospital?”

            “Nah. Was it an ambulance?”

            She smiled politely.

            “Would you like me to tell you what we know?”

            “Yup.”

            “It’s very patchy, I’m afraid.”

            “K.” Agron was getting impatient now.

            “So. You were found by a passer by lying on the pavement unconscious. She was worried, and called an ambulance. Your breathing was very slow and shallow. The paramedics thought you’d had a heroin overdose so they gave you an injection, but that didn’t work, so they took you in to hospital. When you came in they did some blood tests and found a high level of GHB. They were worried that you still weren’t really breathing properly, and your kidneys and heart weren’t doing too well either, so you went to ITU at first. You got a lot better, and you just came up to HDU.”

            “Huh.” Agron said, because what else was there to say.

            “Has this... has it jogged your memory at all?”

            “Uhhh...”

            “I mean... what’s the last thing you remember?”

            Agron thought, but his thoughts were so jumbled he honestly couldn’t tell which of the vague memories just coming back to him were from last week, and which were from last year.

            “I... I dunno. It’s all... mixed up. I can’t tell what’s most recent.” He shrugged, as much as he could from his horizontal position.

            The woman, whose name Agron had already forgotten, stared at him some more, and suddenly asked.

            “Do you use any recreational drugs, Agron?”

            “No. Well...” he could see something hardening behind her eyes. He was tempted to judge her for judging him, but at the same time he could see how difficult it would be, treating people who were at death’s door because they’d put themselves there.

            “I used E a couple of times when I was in uni. Bit of speed too. I smoke weed sometimes, if there’s a joint being passed around, but nothing proper.”

            She was frowning at him slightly.

            “Have you ever used GHB in the past?”

            “No. I thought it was a date rape drug...”

            Something clicked. A guy, a picture on a phone. He’d been on a date. That was the last thing he remembered. He could see realisation dawning on her face too.

            “I...” she cleared her throat. “Is there any possibility someone could have spiked your drink? Given you GHB without you knowing?”

            Agron nodded mutely, and turned his face back towards the ceiling. He heard Naevia slipping away, but didn’t look. He closed his eyes and hoped the exhaustion would pull him under again soon.

 

            “Agron?”

            Agron cracked open an eye.

            “Mum!” He tried to sit up, but something tugged in his wrist and he gave up.

            “It’s OK, sweetie,” his mum said, leaning over to give him a hug. Defeated, Agron kept his arms by his sides. “It’s OK.”

            She straightened, and Agron saw his dad standing behind her, blinking rapidly.

            “Hey, Dad.” Agron said.

            “Hi Agron.”

            Silence. Agron’s mum sniffed and wiped her eyes.

            “We’re so glad you’re OK,” she said. “They said it was touch and go for a while there.”

            “But by the time we got here you were much better.” Agron’s dad added.

            “That’s good.” Agron said. Another silence.

            “Sweetheart, what happened?” his mum asked, sounding agonised.

            I was drugged, he thought. Someone drugged me, and probably raped me, and left me for dead, and I can’t remember any of it.

            “I can’t remember, mum.” he said, and it wasn’t a lie, not really.

 

            The police arrived on the ward, and Agron shrank down in his bed, his first instinct telling him he was in trouble.

            “Is there any way we can talk in private about what happened?” the first policeman asked, and Agron looked around at all the tubes and wires and realised there were far fewer than there had been.

            “Um.” he said, and motioned for the student nurse to come over, asking if she could get him a wheelchair so he could go into the relatives’ room with the police. She obliged, and got another nurse to help him into the chair, and he managed to grab his phone before she wheeled him into the room, and then she turned to go and leave him with the police, but he heard himself say “can you stay?” wanting to have a way out in case he wanted to leave and the police didn’t want him to, and the police agreed to it, and she perched on the edge of the armchair in the room and looked at her hands, occasionally glancing at him, and Agron took a deep breath and started to talk.

            The police were nice, and respectful, and when Agron handed them his phone to scroll through the guy’s pictures, and Agron’s conversation with him before their date, they hastily scrolled past the dick pic Agron had sent him, not that it stopped Agron from nearly curling in on himself in shame.

            I was going to sleep with him, Agron thought to himself, as the police made notes and asked their last couple of clarifying questions. I was a sure thing, he didn’t have to drug me, didn’t have to rape me, didn’t have to halfway _kill_ me, what was he thinking?

            He asked the police if he should try and get in touch with the guy, even though he knew they would look horrified and say no. They took his phone, so they could use it for evidence, and Agron suspected, so that he couldn’t get in touch with the guy. With very little else to do, and his energy and strength slowly returning, he sat and fantasised about what he would send him. Something innocent, like “Hey, what happened when we went out? I can’t remember anything lol” Something threatening “I know what you did”? Or maybe just “I lived bitch”. The police returned his phone, and he looked at the guy’s profile several times, before he was abruptly blocked, and felt an absurd surge of triumph, knowing that this meant the police had been to see him, had told him that Agron was still alive.

            His parents eventually found out that it was a drug overdose that had landed him in ITU, and he couldn’t bring himself to tell them that he was spiked, so they withdrew, disappointed, and ultimately flew back to Australia not long after he was stepped down from HDU to a regular medical ward.

            He got a frantic phone call from Spartacus, who had gone on holiday the day before Agron went on his ill-fated date, and come home to realise that none of their mutual friends had heard from Agron in the two weeks he had been gone, and had gone over to his flat to find it deserted, covered in dust and the fridge full of rotting food. Hearing that Agron had been hospitalised for twelve days without anyone noticing, he had sworn colourfully, cursed Crixus gratifyingly, and demanded Agron’s ward and room number so he could come and see him.

            Agron knew that Spartacus had arrived on the ward when he heard him roaring at one of the nurses, and had unsteadily made his way to the door of his room.

            “Oi!” he shouted, and Spartacus whipped his head round, going white as a sheet at the sight of Agron, and sprinted towards him, wrapping his arms around him and hugging him so hard he squeaked.

            “OK, I think you’re hurting him...” the charge nurse said, sounding both concerned and brisk in that way that only charge nurses can, but Agron waved her away, not really minding even as his ribs squeaked in protest.

            They went and sat on Agron’s bed, though Agron was really half-sitting and half-lying, and the way Spartacus was looking at him in consternation told Agron how shitty he really looked.

            “What happened?” Spartacus asked, and it occurred to Agron for the first time that he hadn’t told him anything, that no one had told him anything. He took a deep breath.

            “I went on a date with this guy...” He got through the whole story, recounting everything from his vague memories of the date itself to the interview with the police, and at several points he thought he saw Spartacus’ eyes fill with tears, and there were moments when Spartacus closed his eyes, but he didn’t ask Agron to stop, he sat and listened to the whole thing, and at the end of it he reached instinctively for Agron, then hesitated.

            “Sorry. I don’t know if – maybe you don’t want...”

            In answer, Agron sat forward and sank into Spartacus’ outstretched arms, and Spartacus rubbed his back soothingly, and Agron felt something shift inside him, like something being uncovered, and felt himself tremble momentarily, and then Spartacus cradled the back of his head, and suddenly Agron was crying like he’d never cried before, great heaving sobs and tears and snot running down his face, and Spartacus just sat there and held him until he was gasping and hiccupping. Spartacus stood up and turned, and found that one of the nurses had heard Agron crying and discreetly left a box of tissues on the chair just inside the door, and closed the curtain around the door so no one could see in. He picked up the box and handed some tissues to Agron, who was now lying on his side on the bed shuddering and coughing. Then he sat on the chair next to Agron’s bed, the one he was meant to sit in, and started to cry too, and Agron snorted with laughter.

            “Don’t laugh at me, prick.” Spartacus said grumpily, and Agron laughed harder, and Spartacus laughed too, not that it stopped him crying.

            “God,” Spartacus said, ultimately. “Is it going to be like this every time?”

            “Nah,” Agron said, “I think I’m done.”

 

            He was not anywhere near done. He managed to hold it together when he got visits from Spartacus, and a horrified Donar, and a sheepish-yet-defiant Crixus, but every night when the lights went out and he closed his eyes to try to get to sleep, he ended up crying his heart out again, trying vainly to smother his sobbing in a pillow, but knowing he was unsuccessful because as the crying finished and he lay there with his breath heaving, a nurse always appeared, soft-footed, offering him a glass of water and sometimes a new pillow and reassuring him that if he ever wanted to talk he could and if he didn’t want to that was OK too. And crying really tired him out, so he always nodded wearily, slurped the water and fell immediately into an exhauseted sleep.

            After a few nights of this, the nurses made one of the terrified junior doctors talk to him about his mood, asking nervously if he had noticed any change in his appetite, his sleep, if he’d had any thoughts of self harm or suicide.

            “No...” Agron said thoughtfully. “I hadn’t thought about it. Good idea, though.”

            The junior looked terrified, and Agron laughed, and got a ticking off later, from a nurse who was clearly trying not to laugh, for teasing the nice doctor. He stuck his tongue out at her.

            “Have you thought about it? Really?” she asked abruptly.

            He thought for a moment.

            “No.” he said. “But I haven’t been thinking about...” he gestured expansively. “Living. The future, either.”

            She nodded sagely.

            “There’s always help. There’s always hope.” she said.

 

            Agron’s friends cleaned and restocked his fridge before he got out of hospital, and Spartacus picked him up and took him home, and he found a bunch of his friends ready to welcome him home. It was a bit awkward, especially since he hadn’t seen some of them, like Mira, since before... everything, but it was nice to see them again, and catch up after nearly three weeks in hospital. Mira hugged him extra tight, and took him aside to apologise for not visiting him in hospital, her brown eyes wide and sincere. Everyone went home after a couple of hours, except Spartacus, who stayed to make Agron dinner and mock him, as he usually did, for his shitty diet (“You see this, Agron? We call this a _vegetable_ ”)

            “You gonna be OK?” he asked, after they’d eaten and talked about nothing for a while, and Agron nodded, even though he wasn’t sure, and Spartacus, slightly reluctantly Agron thought, put on his jacket.

            “Call me if you need me.” he said, and left.

            Agron was fine initially, just sitting and watching a stupid film on the telly, then he started having visions of the guy bursting through his door – “You went to the fucking police? I should have finished the job!” – and his breathing sped up, and he couldn’t slow it down, and his heart was racing, and he couldn’t sit still or stand still he was panicking so much.

            There’s always help. There’s always hope.

            “Spartacus?”

            “Hi, Agron. You OK?”

            “Not completely,” Agron gasped out, and he heard Spartacus’ voice change.

            “I’m coming back – do you need an ambulance?”

            “I’m having a fucking panic attack, you can’t call an ambulance for a panic attack.”

            “Just asking.” Spartacus huffed, and hung up. White spots glittered all over Agron’s field of vision, and the world faded to black.

            “Agron! Agron, wake up!”

            Agron blinked, and the world faded into focus, Spartacus kneeling over him, chalk-white, his jacket still on, the door open behind him.

            “Could you close the door?” Agron tried to ask, but it came out so indistinct that it took several tries for Spartacus to get it and get up and close the door.

            “You scared me!” Spartacus said, and sounded reproachful.

            You think I’m not scared? Agron thought, but said nothing. His body betrayed him, however, and his eyes filled with tears, his lower lip trembling, and Spartacus hauled him into a sitting position and hugged him, and Agron clung to him for a moment before pushing him away and sitting with his back leaning on the back of the sofa. Spartacus sat a couple of feet in front of him, watching him, and Agron angrily wiped at his eyes with the heels of his hands.

 

            “I can stay over.” Spartacus said. “You want me to sleep on the couch or...” he left it unsaid. Agron blinked and nodded, which wasn’t really helpful given that it hadn’t been a yes or no question, and stood up, beckoning Spartacus to follow him through to the bedroom.

            They sat on the bed, Agron in pyjamas, Spartacus in his t shirt and boxers, and Agron picked distractedly at the duvet cover.

            “You want to talk?” Spartacus asked, and Agron shook his head.

            “Agron...”

            “How am I going to pay my rent?” Agron asked “How am I going to buy food? I’m self employed, I don’t get sick pay, I – how am I going to get back to work? How am I going to get up on a stage in front of people and tell _jokes_?”

            “You won’t feel like this forever. And if you never want to do stand up again, you can do something else.”

            “Something _else_?” The idea seemed absurd. There had never been anything else for him – if there had been, he would have taken it, stand up was a shitty gig. No job security, no sick pay, living hand to mouth unless you were one of those really lucky people who got to do arena tours or cross over into TV presenting.

            “Do you need to talk to someone else? A therapist, a counsellor?”

            There’s always help, there’s always hope.

 

            The following day, Agron made an appointment with his GP, though he refused to book an emergency appointment on the same day. Spartacus shook his head at this, but was ultimately accepting.

            “I need to go get some stuff.” Spartacus said, and stood in the middle of the flat, biting his lip.

            “I need to be able to be in the flat alone,” Agron said, feeling brave. “Just go out, get your stuff, come back in a couple of hours, I’ll be fine.”

            It wasn’t entirely fine. After an hour or so, Agron started feeling panicky, and googled how to avoid having a panic attack. He took slow breaths, counting to three on the in and the out each time, and reminded himself that he was in a flat with a locked door, that the man who drugged him didn’t know where he lived, that he probably wouldn’t want to come looking for him anyway. It worked. A bit.

            He relaxed a lot more when Spartacus came back, and they watched a film and talked about anything but Agron’s ongoing breakdown.

 

            They went out together during the day – to the supermarket, to the park, to museums and art galleries. But once it got dark they stayed in, which was a bit of a cramp on Spartacus’ career. Agron encouraged Spartacus to go out for increasingly longer periods of time, at first during the day, and then at night, so that he could go out and work. Agron even tried going out by himself while Spartacus was away at a meeting during the day, but his chest got tight when he got to the bottom of the stairs and he retreated to his flat.

            By the time his GP appointment rolled around, he could distract himself enough to cope with Spartacus going out and leaving him alone for most of the day, and Spartacus had moved to sleeping on the sofa. He could see a panic attack coming, and could sometimes head it off, but when he couldn’t he usually managed to remember that he would feel better eventually. He hadn’t passed out since the first one. He explained all this to his GP, who looked increasingly concerned and referred him for counselling.

            There’s always help. There’s always hope.

            The police got in touch and told him they had been forced to drop the charges due to lack of evidence. Agron had been tested positive and been treated for chlamydia while in the hospital – having had a clean screen a week before the attack – and the police had got a warrant and managed to see the other man’s medical records, which showed he had been treated for it at around the same time. He claimed he and Agron had done GHB together and Agron had left his flat and must have collapsed in the street. They did not believe a jury would convict – they might have done if they had got a rape kit done when Agron initially went to ITU, but he was unconscious and unable to consent, and the medical staff treating him at the time had no way of knowing it wasn’t a self inflicted overdose.

            He spoke to his counsellor about it, and she praised him for the coping strategies he had been using, and his determination to wean himself off of having Spartacus babysitting him constantly.

            “But it’s OK to need help, it’s OK to need to talk to someone.”

            “Yeah, but not _all the time_.It’s a lot for him to deal with, he’s got his own life, I’m sure he’d love to not have to be around me all the time.”

            “If one of your friends went through what you went through, and was struggling, would you resent them for needing your help?”

            Agron said nothing, but later on when Spartacus was out at a gig and he was feeling tense and getting palpitations, he texted him asking him to call when he got off stage.

            There’s always help, there’s always hope.

 

            The first time he left the house alone, he almost didn’t realise it. He had run out of milk and was halfway to the shop when he realised he was outside alone for the first time since he came out of hospital. He panicked momentarily, but took a couple of deep breaths and started walking again – slightly more quickly – in the direction of the shop. He picked up the milk, was extremely thankful that there was no queue, threw a fiver at the bemused shop assistant and didn’t wait for his change before bolting. He actually ran up the last flight of stairs, and threw his whole weight against the door of his flat to close it, and his heart was pounding as if he had run a marathon, but he had _done it_. He texted Spartacus about this new development, and Spartacus sent back half a dozen confetti and champagne emojis, and Agron threw his head back and laughed.

            There’s always help. There’s always hope.

 

Not long after Agron started being able to be in the flat on his own overnight he ran out of money and got evicted. Spartacus had a spare room, and offered Agron free room and board until he got back on his feet, and Agron mentally gave himself a deadline of six months to get out of there or start paying rent.

            He got to know Sura a bit better, having always kept his distance before as he thought Spartacus was an idiot for ditching Mira. But Sura was nice, and cool, and somehow Agron was forced to admit that the two of them made more sense in some weird way than Spartacus and Mira. Agron decided to earn his keep by cleaning and cooking, and when he cooked Sura would sit in the kitchen and chat to him while sneakily helping him – turning the oven on when he forgot, setting timers for him, offering to cut some of the vegetables and in doing so showing him how to do it more easily, without the risk of losing a finger.

            On the advice of his counsellor, Agron took up running, and the first time he tried it he went out for twenty minutes and was found by Spartacus lying on the floor of the living room scarlet in the face and gasping for breath. Once he had made sure Agron’s life wasn’t in any immediate danger, Spartacus made fun of him mercilessly, but while he was running Agron had been too busy battling his extreme unfitness to worry about the fact that he was _outside_ so he did it again the next day, and the next, but not the one after because he was so stiff he could barely move, but he went back to it a couple of days later, and stretched beforehand this time.

            Over time, between getting regular meals and running most days, Agron started putting on weight – but it wasn’t fat, it was _muscle_. Spartacus made fun of him when he caught Agron admiring himself in the mirror, but Sura winked at him and offered him the use of Spartacus’ free weights.

            Agron went to one of Spartacus’ gigs, and watched from backstage, and thought, with a sudden pain _I miss this._ He missed the shit-talking backstage, the tension of waiting for your turn, but with an even more painful yearning, he missed being up on stage, barely able to see the audience but making them laugh anyway. He missed being heckled, and putting down the hecklers, he missed the incomparable rush of an incredible set when the audience is eating out of your hand – fuck, he even missed dying on his arse.

            He and Spartacus talked about the set over beer well into the early hours of the morning, arguing about whether this joke should go there, or whether he should move his joke from halfway through – the one that had got the biggest reaction – to the end, for a big finish.

            “Well, let’s see you do better, if you think you’re so smart” Spartacus said, and Agron stared at him, and Spartacus stared right back.

            Bookers at comedy clubs have very short memories, but begrudgingly they gave Agron a couple of slots – not at great times, but better than nothing. The first time he went back he died horribly, but at least Spartacus was laughing at the end, even if he was just laughing about how horribly it had gone. The second time wasn’t great, but it was a lot better than the first, and he intimidated an obnoxious heckler into silence, which won him the goodwill of the rest of the audience, and at the end Spartacus wasn’t laughing, but nodding approvingly and clapping him on the back.

            The third gig he booked they bumped him and didn’t tell him, but the compere had called in sick, and Spartacus and Agron and Crixus (all of whom had started working out more) shouted the guy down until he let Agron compere, which was more money for less work anyway.

            Agron had never compered before, but he’d always wanted to – it was his favourite bits of comedy – flying by the seat of your pants, interacting with the audience – and the first audience member he talked to was an absolute cracker, he got some really funny stuff out of her and got the audience on his side, and he called Crixus a cunt when he introduced him, and got another laugh when Crixus tried to punch him and he dodged, causing Crixus to stumble.

           

            Agron and Crixus never really hung out together except with Spartacus, but one day they bumped into each other in a coffee shop and discovered they were both going the same way so grudgingly walked together. They had paused waiting for a gap in the traffic so they could cross the road when Agron noticed the lady next to him staring at him, frowning slightly. He looked down at her, initially wondering if she recognised him from a show, but she looked familiar, she must be...

            “Naevia! Isn’t it?” he said, and she smiled, and stuck out her hand for him to shake.

            “Agron, you look well.”

            “Better than I did, I’m sure.”

            Naevia was looking past him at Crixus, who was staring at her with his lips slightly parted.

            “Sorry. Naevia, this is Crixus, he’s a friend of mine. Crixus, this is Naevia, she’s one of the doctors who looked after me in the hospital.”

            “Hi,” Naevia said, extending her hand to Crixus, smiling a slightly different smile to the one she had given Agron.

            “Hi,” Crixus said, and his voice sounded _really_ weird.

            Agron had been expecting Naevia to want to talk to him, want to know how her patient was getting on, but instead she asked Crixus:

            “So what do you do, Crixus? I hear Agron does standup- are you the same?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Ooh, a comedian, tell me a joke – go on!”

            Crixus only blinked at her, looking like he’d been hit in the head with something, and it was left to Agron to issue the traditional riposte

            “If he has to tell a joke, you have to do something to do with your job. You’re a doctor – save someone’s life. Right now.”

            Naevia looked at Agron as if she had just remembered he was there.

            “But no one’s dying.”

            “That’s OK, I’ll just shove Crixus into traffic.” Agron grabbed the fabric of Crixus’ jacket, he wasn’t really going to shove him, but Naevia cried: “No!” and threw her arms around Crixus to protect him. Crixus looked down at her, an expression of wonder on his face.

            “You did save my life.” he said.

            “No she didn’t, I wasn’t actually going to-” Agron began, but was interrupted.

            “You want to get a coffee?” Crixus asked Naevia.

            “Yeah, absolutely.”

            “Now?”

            “Sure.”

            And then the two of them walked back the way Agron and Crixus had come.

            “Bye!” Agron shouted after them, but neither of them turned round.

 

Initially after he got out of hospital and started leaving the house again, Agron had this fun thing where whenever he saw a shortish, medium build dark haired white guy he would hallucinate and think it was the guy who raped him. That happened less and less frequently with time and counselling, and after a while Agron was less afraid to go into the part of London where the guy lived – not onto his street or particularly near it, but into the deli on the corner of Mira’s street, where he stopped at her request to buy teabags on his way to hers. It happened again, having not happened in months, and Agron blinked, waiting for his vision to clear, to see that it was actually a different guy, but it didn’t, and he realised that it actually was him, and he was looking at Agron absolutely aghast. Agron’s brain didn’t catch up with what was happening, and he watched as if he was watching on a TV screen as the guy looked Agron up and down, taking in his new bulk and blank, vaguely threatening expression, put his shopping basket down on the ground and left.

            Agron blinked, wondering if he had imagined the whole thing. But no, the basket of food was still there – Agron took a step forward and looked out of the deli’s big picture window, and he could see the guy hurrying away, looking over his shoulder occasionally.

            He’s afraid of me, Agron thought. He’s terrified of me! He smiled to himself, and then began to shake uncontrollably and had to drop the teabags in the abandoned basket and bolt to Mira’s for safety.

 

The best newcomer award at the Fringe went to a guy who did a routine about being sexually asaulted, and everyone pointedly didn’t mention it to Agron. Agron had been thinking about incorporating something about it into a routine – he used a lot of material in his own life, and had been talking about being Australian in the UK, and about how different his life was now that he was big and muscular instead of tall and skinny, and his resentment that he actually did feel better for eating vegetables and exercising, just like his friends had always told him he would. But this big, life-altering event – he had never talked about it. Then Spartacus sent him a link to an event being organised by RapeCrisis – people who had been sexually assaulted or abused performing stand up about it.

            “It’ll be full of amateurs” he texted back

            “Get in touch with them, send them a CV and some clips. They might be able to make it work.”

            The event organisers were eager to have Agron contribute, and put him at the end of the night, like a headliner, and put his name in a larger font on the poster – after asking him if that would be OK. He workshopped his material with Spartacus, who started out tense and quiet, and ultimately relaxed into his usual critical self.

            “No, you should expand on that – make more out of how fucked it is to get competitive about traumatic experiences.”

            “What, like devise a points system?”

            Spartacus’ eyes lit up, and Agron jumped out of his seat and began pacing.

            “So, you get five points for actually being able to remember what happened, but ten for landing up in ITU with multiple organ failure?”

            “Yes! And then you get so many points for it being someone you know, and so many for a stranger –and then debate with yourself which is worth more points!”

            “This is sick.” Agron remarked.

            “What happened to you was sick. Talking about it, dissecting it, isn’t.”

 

Agron ended up going light on the scoring system stuff, and talking more about his ongoing phobia of short white guys with dark hair “I can’t watch anything with Daniel Radcliffe in it any more – I’m the only person over the age of five who’s afraid of Harry Potter!” The debate about a ranking system for sexual trauma and an unpacking of the many weird and not-particularly-wonderful ways in which it had impacted his own life led on to a larger point about the stupidity of trying to compare traumas and decide which is worst, and the fact that people will inevitably try to do so anyway. He went back and forth on the idea of undercutting his whole set by finishing with: “But I’m pretty sure I still win, bye!” and diving off stage, but ultimately, when he was on stage looking out on an audience of sexual trauma survivors (who laughed harder than any of his non-abused friends had done at the really rough jokes in his act) he didn’t have the heart. So his ending wasn’t particularly strong, but he still got a good response, which he was relieved about, since so many of the “amateurs” he had sneered at when Spartacus told him about the event had _absolutely slaughtered_ it, and he had started to worry that he wouldn’t measure up.

 

The event wasn’t filmed, but it was reviewed, and some of the lines from his set bounced around Twitter for a few days afterwards, which had never happened before. He booked a couple of obscure radio shows and corporate gigs after that, which surprised him, because it wasn’t like he could use any of the material from his RapeCrisis show on them, but a gig was a gig, and he had enough good stuff about more innocuous topics to make them work. One slightly awkward side effect was that he started getting recognised more, which would be fine, except it was all people who knew about his RapeCrisis set and some of them were _creepy_. The buzz died down after a while, but the few gigs he got after the set led on to more, similar gigs, and he scraped enough money together for a security deposit on a tiny, grotty flat in the arse end of nowhere just in time for Spartacus to ask Sura to move in with him.

 

All of which led to him scoring an opening act in one of the bigger comedy clubs in the West End. It was good money, and was rumoured to be frequented by agents from the _big_ agencies, and producers from Radio 4 and even the BBC TV section.

            A lady in the front row whooped as soon as he walked out.

            “Oh you are barking up entirely the wrong tree, my love.” he said, and she did it again.

            “No, really, I’m gay.”

            There was a short silence, and then some tittering.

            “Yeah, I don’t seem the type, do I? Some people really struggle with this, I’m thinking about getting myself some pink shirts, learning the words to some showtunes. I did see Legally Blonde last year, and it was ah- _may_ -zing!” Another laugh. Nothing gut-busting, but a decent laugh. A happy audience, something he could build on.

            “Yeah, dating as a gay guy is hard. I think it’s hard for everyone, but I think there are some things about me that make it particularly difficult. For one thing, I’m Australian, so every British gay guy I meet thinks I’m going to beat him up.”

            That got a good laugh, bashing Australia usually went down well in English comedy clubs.

            “Yeah, this is a weird belief that British people seem to have, that every single Australian person is, like, _violently_ homophobic. All right, we don’t have marriage equality yet, but you guys only got it, like, five years ago, so stow your sass.”

            That got an even bigger laugh. UK audiences also tended to enjoy a bit of UK bashing.

            “And the other thing is that – well, I know straight people use dating apps as well, but Grindr makes Tinder look like some Victorian fucking courtship ritual.”

            Slightly nervous laughter. He’d have to not go too deep into the horrific shit he’d seen on Grindr.       

            “Seriously, it’s all “This is how big my dick is, also – d’y’ wanna buy some meth?”

            A much heartier laugh. Maybe they were game after all, but he decided to move on.

            “So for me – I mean, I’m thirty now, I’d like to have a... like, an actual relationship... with someone whose surname I know.”

            That got a bigger laugh than it deserved – he’d got them onside, they were giving him the benefit of the doubt, letting him build up to bigger laughs.

            “But that’s kind of difficult to find. I mean, are there any gay guys _here_ who would like to date me?”

            Another, more male whoop, this time from the bar, which was in darkness.

            “Damn, I can’t see you. Are you hot?”

            “Yes!”

            “Well, in that case, I’ll see you after the show! Mine’s a Stella, by the way.” He winked, and finger-gunned with one hand. There was another laugh, and Agron decided not to test the goodwill of the audience any further, and carry on with his actual set.

 

            The set went well, and Agron hung around the side of the stage for a bit, but wasn’t beckoned over to a table by any producers or agents, and after a few minutes decided to wander over to the bar to get himself a drink. Or have one bought for him, if the Middle Eastern guy looking at him and smiling was any indication. He walked casually up to the empty seat next to the guy and hesitated. The guy pointed at the seat, and Agron took it.

            “Did you...” he studied the guy some more. He was in his mid twenties, with long black hair, mid brown skin and enormous brown eyes. He looked posh, in that indefinable way that posh people do – Agron thought it had something to do with the way they held their jaws, but had never managed to specify it enough to make it a part of his act. He was smiling, cocking his head to the side, waiting for Agron to spit it out.

            “Did you whoop at me, by any chance, when I asked if anyone wanted to date me?”

            “I did, yes.” He was still smiling. A very posh smile.

            “Well, then.” Even if he had been kidding, and was actually straight, Agron figured he couldn’t really object if Agron hit on him a little. “Can I buy you a drink?”

            The guy looked rueful.

            “I already have one.”

            “Oh.” Agron knew polite rejection when he saw it. “I’ll just...”

            “I got one for you as well.” _Christ_ , that accent. It would make Spartacus sneer, but Agron secretly had a bit of a thing for incredibly posh guys.

            “I got you a Sprite, I know you asked for Stella, but I’m Muslim, I don’t give money for alcohol, even for other people, sorry.”

            “No, no, don’t apologise, I-” There was a big laugh from behind them, from the people who were actually paying attention to the show, and Agron waited for it to die down before continuing. “I don’t mind.”

            “OK.” the guy said, smiling.

            There was a small pause.

            “So you’re Muslim.” Agron said, and the guy nodded, a cautious expression stealing over his face.

            “But you bought me a drink.”

            “Yes.”

            “So you... date guys?”        

            “Yee-ah?”

            “Sorry.”

            “OK.”

            Agron was worried he’d fucked it, but the guy looked amused, more than anything.

            “So – what’s your name?”

            “Nasir.”

            “Hi, Nasir, I’m Agron.”


End file.
